Owens Christabel, Lambert Helen, Lloyd Keith, Donovan Jenny
Christabel Owens, Mental Health Research Group, Peninsula Medical School, Wonford House, Dryden Road, Exeter EX2 5AF, UK.
Sociol Health Illn. 2008 Mar;30(2):237-54. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01034.x.
Suicide research relies heavily on accounts provided by bereaved relatives, using a method known as the psychological autopsy. Psychological autopsy studies are invariably quantitative in design and their findings reinforce the medical model of suicide, emphasising the role of mental illness. They largely ignore the meanings that narrators attach to events, the nature of the sense-making task and the influences bearing upon it. This study drew on psychological autopsy data but used qualitative analytic methods. Fourteen semi-structured interviews with the parents of young men aged 18-30 who had taken their own lives form the basis for this paper. Some parents represent their sons as victims who were cruelly destroyed by external forces, while others portray them as agents of their own destruction. Either way, their narratives are dominated by moral rather than medical categories and by questions of personal accountability. We show how the parents use the interview to perform a complex reconstructive task, striving to piece together both their son's and their own shattered biographies and repair damage to their moral identities. We argue that their stories represent survival tools, enabling them not only to make sense of the past but also to face their own future.
自杀研究严重依赖于逝者亲属提供的描述，采用的是一种名为心理解剖的方法。心理解剖研究在设计上总是定量的，其研究结果强化了自杀的医学模式，强调精神疾病的作用。它们很大程度上忽略了叙述者赋予事件的意义、意义构建任务的本质以及对其产生影响的因素。本研究借鉴了心理解剖数据，但使用了定性分析方法。对18至30岁自杀青年男子的父母进行的14次半结构化访谈构成了本文的基础。一些父母将他们的儿子描述为被外部力量残酷摧毁的受害者，而另一些父母则将他们描绘成自我毁灭的主体。不管怎样，他们的叙述都由道德而非医学范畴以及个人责任问题主导。我们展示了父母如何利用访谈来完成一项复杂的重建任务，努力拼凑起他们儿子以及他们自己破碎的人生经历，并修复对他们道德身份的损害。我们认为他们的故事是生存工具，不仅能让他们理解过去，还能让他们面对自己的未来。
